NHL All-Star Weekend 2024: A Fan's Perspective

Let's put our cynicism aside and admit that All-Star Games are fun if we let them be...

The 2024 NHL All-Star Game was fun.

Hell, the whole weekend with the Skills Competition, and the Player’s Draft, and the Fan Fair (or HockeyCon, as I’ve been calling it) was a lot of fun.

It feels weird to need to say that about an event like this, but here we are.

(And I say this, by the way, not out of any loyalty to the NHL or to “Hockey Culture” at large—certainly not this week).

No, I say this as a pushback to the cynicism that permeates our culture and surrounded the leadup to this event. The loudest voices were the ones making claims like, “It’s not a real game,” or, “The players don’t even try.” And while there may be some truth to those claims, they also miss the point entirely.

It’s easy to be cynical. We’re all cynical about some things. I certainly am. And there is plenty to be cynical these days. But sometimes it’s good to put our cynicism aside and just enjoy things.

And that’s what I did this weekend: I enjoyed myself and the spectacle all around me.

We shouldn’t forget the world’s problems, or put our cynicism aside completely. But we can get back to the big issues on Monday. For now, let’s bask in the afterglow of a grand weekend of All-Star hockey.

The Road To The All-Star Game

Before this year, the concept of going to the All-Star game seemed about as possible as going to space. Could it happen? Sure, in theory. But I wasn’t banking on it happening any time soon.

The last time the NHL held the All-Star Game in Toronto was in 2000. I was six and have absolutely zero memory of any of it. Not that I was there or anything, but the 2000 All-Star Game may as well be in the ancient past as far as my memories are concerned.

Then, during last year’s All-Star Game in Florida, it was announced that the 2024 event would be coming back to Toronto. And, to be honest, I still wasn’t thinking about going. At most, I figured I would attend the HockeyCon event and then treat the game and Skills Competition the same way I treated them every other year. Which is to say I either wouldn’t watch them, or if I did it would be as background noise.

The possibility of attending the game suddenly became much more real in the summer, when an opportunity to buy advanced tickets arose through the uncle of a friend who has season tickets for the Toronto Maple Leafs.

My Dad and I decided to jump at the chance and grabbed a pair of tickets to the game. There was the opportunity to get Skills Competition tickets too, but we passed on those at the time. I was remembering past events and they hadn’t made for great entertainment, and I figured this year would be more of the same (there’s that cynicism again).

Almost in the blink of an eye, this event that always felt so far away suddenly felt within reach. We were going to the All-Star Game!

All-Star Thursday

As the All-Star Game approached, more festivities were announced. The kick-off now being “All-Star Thursday”, a three-part event beginning with the return of the Player’s Draft, followed by a ceremony honouring the surviving members of the 1967 Leafs, and concluding with the PWHL All-Star Showcase.

Tickets were, comparatively inexpensive. I sat in the Gold Section of the Lower Bowl for $40, something that is unheard of for a Leafs game. It’s kinda pathetic to say but, sitting that close to the ice at Scotiabank Arena alone was enough to get me at least a little excited. And the event itself did not disappoint.

The Player’s Draft is one of those things that should never have gone away. The idea is simple, instead of the players being divided into teams based on something arbitrary like conference or division or even nationality, team Captains would be named and they would pick their teams in a draft—playground style.

Hockey players aren’t exactly known for their bold personalities, so each captain was given a celebrity co-captain who was there to inject some energy into the event. And two of those co-captains, Michael Buble and Will Arnett (of Team Hughes and Team McDavid respectively) absolutely delivered.

On the flip side of the coin, Justin Bieber (co-captain of Team Matthews), who had seemed destined to be the star of the weekend (his company designed the jerseys and he’s friends with many of the players), turned out to be the biggest dud of the whole affair. Sitting on stage and seeming completely out of it whenever he was asked for comment by the hosts, he might as well have not been there. It was weird.

(Rounding out the celebrity co-captains was Tate McRae, who—like Buble and Arnett—played along gamely with the whole thing. Though being paired with Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar didn’t exactly give her much to work when it came to stage personas).

Did the draft go off perfectly? Of course not. There were hot mics leading to people talking over each other, making things difficult to follow in places. But overall it was a cool idea and fun to watch.

It’s the sort of thing that can be built on for future games. Keep the celebrity co-captains (but make sure they're engaged), and encourage the players to get creative. Auston Matthews said later he would have orchestrated a trade for his Leafs teammate Mitch Marner if another team had taken him. And at one point Team Hughes looked to be exploring the idea of a trade with Team McDavid. Trades would inject some unpredictability into the Draft which would help up the energy and entertainment value.

Whatever is done, the NHL shouldn’t throw the draft aside the way it did a few years ago. Let it grow into the staple of All-Star weekend the way it looked like it was meant to be when they tried it the first few times in the 2010s.

The draft was followed by the surviving members of the 1967 Toronto Maple Leafs being honoured. The ‘67 Leafs, of course, were the last Leafs team to win the Stanley Cup and, sadly, many members of the team are no longer with us. This made the acknowledgement of those still here all the more meaningful. Plus, anytime you can get Dave Keon doing stuff with the Leafs after his decades of estrangement from the club just feels right.

The absolute highlight of Thursday, however, was the PWHL showcase.

It’s safe to say the first season of the Professional Women’s Hockey League has been a success. Every few weeks it seems a new record for highest attendance at a professional women’s hockey game is being set. And getting tickets, for PWHL Toronto in particular, has become such a challenge that a friend of mine recently compared it to getting tickets to The Eras Tour.

The showcase itself was a three-on-three game between Team King and Team Kloss, each made up of twelve players from all six inaugural teams in the league. The hockey was electric, with great goals and big saves. In the end, powered by PWHL Ottawa’s Savannah Harmon’s five points, Team King won the game 5-3.

The crowd, which at times seemed to lose interest in the first two events, loved it. Professional women’s hockey, thankfully and finally, seems to be here to stay.

HockeyCon, aka NHL Fan Fair

If you’ve read this Substack before, or followed any of my podcasting exploits, you’ll know I spend a lot of time at conventions. I’ve been to three countries and five cities for Star Wars Celebration alone. So I was very curious as to what the NHL Fan Fair, essentially Comic-Con but for Hockey, would be like.

The first thing that struck me was that it was a lot more like D23 Expo (Disney’s self-run convention) than San Diego Comic-Con. This is not a bad thing, I love D23 and have been many times. But you can really tell that one company is controlling everything. Unlike the somewhat chaotic feel of SDCC or Fan Expo Canada, where massive activations and displays from major companies/studios are crammed next to indie publishers and vendors selling vintage comics and collectibles.

The trade-off is space. It’s always way easier to navigate D23 than the other Comic-Cons since there are fewer experiences and exhibits, so they are spaced out in a way that attendees don’t feel like they are packed in like sardines (most of the time). Fan Fair was the same. There was lots to do and see, but it was well-spaced out and easy to navigate.

Highlights included a terrific Hockey Hall of Fame exhibit (complete with an opportunity for a photo with the Stanley Cup) as well as countless opportunities for attendees to put their skills to the test. I shocked myself, hitting four out of five potential targets at one of the many shooting accuracy activations. I won’t pat myself on the back too much here, but I haven’t actually played hockey in over a decade and when I did it was never at a high level and I certainly wasn’t what you would call a sharpshooter (I was more of a stay at home defenceman). So I was very happy with the result.

I also really enjoyed the replica of the Leafs dressing room where you could try on the player’s actual, game-used helmet and gloves. It was worth it just for the opportunity to find out which Leafs’ head is the same size as mine. The answer, if for some reason you’re curious, is John Tavares. The captain’s helmet, literally, fit me perfectly.

Ultimately, though, just like with Celebration, D23, Fan Expo, and all the other conventions I’ve been to over the years, the real highlight was the people. The best part of HockeyCon was reconnecting with some old friends, including some I hadn’t seen since high school.

It can be easy to get so caught up in all the “stuff” that surrounds the things we love, be it hockey or Star Wars or something else, that we forget that the best part of it is sharing it with other people. And that’s what Fan Fair was all about.

Skills Competition

I mentioned earlier that I initially passed on getting tickets to the Skills Competition because in previous years it seemed like the players just didn’t care and I assumed this year’s would be the same (hello cynicism, my old friend).

The NHL, to their credit, recognized this too and worked with Connor McDavid (inarguably the best player in the world right now) to revamp the event.

Turns out all that was needed was, in the words of Dr Evil, “One million dollars.”

And while I can feel the cynicism creeping back in about guys who have multi-million dollar contracts being motivated by another million bucks, dammit if they didn’t put on a pretty great show. Except for Nikita Kutcherov. He seemed bored and the crowd let him have it, booing whenever he touched the puck. That said, sometimes it’s nice to have a villain and he played the part well (especially for a Toronto crowd that’s had to face him in the playoffs for two years in a row).

The revamped event also saw the number of participants cut down from “everyone in the All-Star Game” to twelve. And they would build up a cumulative score across several events. The person with the highest score at the end would get the million dollars.

When I heard about the new format, I immediately regretted passing on the Skills Competition tickets in the summer. And so, shortly after Christmas, when I was buying my tickets for Thursday and the Fan Fair, I bit the bullet and grabbed a ticket for the Skills Competition on the secondary market.

I have no regrets about the decision.

The competitions were fun to watch, especially when you could tell the players were really trying (a welcome change of pace from previous years). William Nylander in particular had a few moments, especially in the final two events, where you could tell he was going for gold. He came up well short, but it was still fun to see him put on a show during the one-on-one challenge with LA Kings goalie Cam Talbot.

Throw in some surprise appearances from Sydney Crosby and Connor Bedard, as well as PWHL Toronto stars Sarah Nurse and Blayre Turnbull, and Leafs alumni Steve Thomas and Doug Gilmour, and you’ve got yourself a pretty sweet event.

Something else that also made me smile was that the points system was almost identical to the one used on Taskmaster, with the first-place person getting five points, second place getting four, and so on. I don’t know how many other people were thinking about that, but I found myself chuckling at the Taskmaster-ifcation of the event.

In the end, it was the best player in the world who won. Sure, an upset would have been a great story, but Connor McDavid is the best of the best and he proved it again on Friday.

The Big Game(s)

Which brings us to Saturday and the All-Star Game itself.

A nice innovation of the NHL All-Star Game over the past few years is that it’s no longer just one game, it’s three. A few years back the NHL replaced the standard 3-period five-on-five game between two teams with a three-on-three tournament between four teams.

As a result, Team McDavid faced off with Team MacKinnon in the first game, with Team McDavid winning in a shoot-out. Team Matthews then took on Team Hughes in another game that went to a shoot-out, with Team Matthews taking the win. All this setting up the finale everyone was hoping for: Matthews vs McDavid in the final.

Normally, I’m not a huge fan of three-on-three or shootouts, which have become the standard overtime tie-breakers in regular season games. (I wish the NHL would go back to just having five minutes of five-on-five OT and ending the game in a tie if no one scores—though I doubt that will ever happen). But there’s something about the All-Star Game that suits both of them. The three-on-three format allows for more dynamic action, and shootouts let the players show off their creativity. Both things you want in this situation.

Were any of the games the most intense, thrilling hockey you’ve ever seen? Of course not. But there were some great moments, both offensively (as expected) and in goal (less expected). Sergei Bobrovsky robbed Mitch Marner in the dying seconds of the first half of the final game with a highlight reel-worthy save that, had it happened in a real game, should be in contention for save of the year. Marner throwing his glove a Bobrovsky afterward, followed by the two of them laughing it up on the ice also gave us one of those rare moments of hockey players actually letting their personalities shine.

As I said, the All-Star Game was fun. The players obviously weren’t playing like it was the Stanley Cup final, but you could tell both Team Matthews and Team McDavid wanted to win that final game. And even when Team Matthews had a multi-goal lead in the final minutes, Team McDavid made a push to tie the game and gave the de facto home squad a scare.

In the end, much to the delight of the Toronto crowd, Team Matthews carried the day with Auston Matthews being named Most Valuable Player.

A storybook ending.

I Have An Idea

We’ve established that the All-Star Game is a lot of fun, but is it perfect? No, but I have an idea to make it even better.

There may not be another All-Star Game until 2027, with the Four Nations tournament next year and the Olympics in 2026 likely taking the All-Star Game’s place as the in-season showcase. But when it does come back, one thing I think the NHL needs to do is make sure that seats are filled with fans.

The morning of the All-Star Game I was chatting with a friend about the Skills Competition and she pointed out a funny moment on the TV broadcast the night before. When they announced the event was sold out, it seemed an odd statement given that empty seats in the lower bowl could be seen throughout the night. The same thing happened that afternoon at the All-Star Game itself, where a sell-out crowd was announced even though you could plainly see empty seats.

I have no doubt that all those seats were sold, but their owners were either more interested in the premium clubs and lounges located underneath the concourse or just didn’t bother to show up.

Part of that is a Toronto thing.

The crowd at Leafs games is notoriously (and annoyingly) corporate. The city’s high-rollers buy up the overpriced lower-bowl seats and then don’t actually sit in the seats. And a complaint that’s often levied at the All-Star Game is the same thing: it’s too corporate.

I have a potential solution for this (though I’m not holding my breath that it will be adopted): the tickets to the All-Star Game should be free. They should be raffled off to anyone who wants to attend the game (and the Skills Competition). That way the seats will be filled with hockey fans who are excited to see the league’s elite talent.

The upper bowl (aka the “cheap” seats), where I was sitting on Friday and Saturday was full the whole time and everyone up there was excited to be there. A telling contrast to the seemingly half-full lower bowl.

The league should want to fill the whole arena with the energy of the upper bowl. Raffling off the tickets would certainly move things in that direction. And surely the league can throw some sort of gala for the corporate high-rollers and ensure that enough players attend it so that all the suits can get their selfies with the stars.

Like I said, I doubt it will ever happen, but I think it would go a long way to changing the energy around the event. And it would be a nice gesture from the league to the fans in the host city. Regardless, they need to find a way to ensure there are bums in the seats for the TV visual if nothing else.

Always In Motion Is The Future

When people would ask me this weekend why I went all in on all the All-Star events, my answer was simple: the All-Star game comes to your city once every 25-30 years. And with the NHL’s continued expansion and newfound focus on international hockey that gap between hosting the game will likely only grow. So why not take advantage of the moment and embrace the experience?

I started this piece by talking about the cynicism that surrounded the All-Star Game because that seemed to be most of what I heard heading into the weekend. “It’s not real hockey,” people would say. Or, “The events are boring and the players don’t try.”

This attitude was everywhere. About a week before the event I was listening to a podcast hosted by two established hockey reporters who had been to many All-Star Games and they were downplaying the event’s entertainment value. They went as far as to suggest that their audience, mostly based in Toronto, shouldn’t be too excited about it.

Even at the game itself, early on in the first Team McDavid vs Team MacKinnon matchup, I could hear people snidely commenting on the quality of play and sarcastically asking themselves what they were expecting from the All-Star Game

And who’s to say they’re definitively wrong? I was in the eye of the storm, so to speak. I bought in hook, line, and sinker. And I’d never been to an event like it before. Maybe if you’ve been to a dozen like the guys on the podcast, it all felt like the same-old, same-old.

But I don’t think so.

The fans at the game who were grumbling about the quality of play early on soon quit their moaning as it became clear that the players were still going to put on a show. Something special was happening on the ice. And not just on Saturday, but all three days. There was a magic in the air. The players were having fun and putting in the right amount of effort. This one felt different.

Even the non-hockey entertainment was great. Tate McCrae put on an excellent show during the second intermission (and I say that even though we were sitting on the wrong side of the arena to really appreciate the show, and Tate spent most of her set with her back to us). And, while I can’t say I was familiar with the musicians who performed during the Skills Competition, I can’t deny that they put on a good show and I’ve already looked up some of their music at home.

In the end, I’m glad I jumped at the chance to see the All-Star events in my home city, opportunities that only come around every few decades. I’m glad I didn’t let the cynicism of other people, or even my own, distract from what turned out to be a great weekend of hockey fun.